TNR Report

The Tuesday Night Ride is awesome. It is good to be back.

Good turnout last night: Jonny G, Bill, Craig, Kevin, Hal, Brad, Mike, and me, with Victor joining at the clubhouse. After some pre-ride espresso and chit chat, we hit the cobbles to warm up the legs before heading north for some track racing at West K. High. Four laps for a quick one km race. They let me win as a welcome home present of sorts. Craig and Kevin were second and third. Everyone agreed that track racing is awesome and that Grass Track Fridays might well be the highlight of the summer. Then it was back to the clubhouse, with KoM points at the Arlington St. bridge and Garbage Hill.

Mike regaled us with stories from this past weekend's road races. And after pressing him for clarification on the ambiguities regarding his team affiliation, it was ruled that he should be cleared of any wrongdoing. It turns out that it was a bureaucratic error, which confirms once again that you can never really trust a bureaucrat. It also means that we have our first taste of battle in the FGBC - RRR FGD Challenge. After the first weekend of racing, RRR has 28 points while the FGBC has zero. We may actually have to show up at a race if we want to play this game, boys and girls. That should not, however, distract us from the importance of talking the talk. For the record, we will use the same points system as the road race series. Points are awarded to the top 20 finishers, no matter how many racers show up, using the following scale: 1st – 25, 2nd – 22, 3rd – 20, 4th – 19, 5th – 18, 6th – 16, 7th – 15, 8th – 14, 9th – 13, 10th – 12, 11th – 11, 12th – 10, 13th – 9 ,14th – 8, 15th – 7, 16th – 6, 17th – 5, 18th – 4, 19th – 3, 20th – 2.

There was some talk about the upcoming race season and how awesome it is going to be. It was agreed that shortening races while they are going on is absolutely to be avoided. Just like the post-vasectomy infections the president is so eager to warn against. It was also agreed that cancelling and rescheduling races is generally frowned upon, no matter how good the excuse. Finally, there was some talk about RRR and FGBC cooperating to put on a Spring Classic race worthy of the name. It would be horrible, which is to say it would be awesome.

Amidst all this talk about racing, Vic insisted that he should not acquire a race license because, as he put it, he is "not a racer." Shortly thereafter, however, he was overheard bragging about finishing second in his first ever race. We will get to the bottom of this. And I suspect Vic will end up with a license to thrill us all with his bike racing prowess.

The tunes were as sweet as ever. Among other things, they gave occasion to the splendid opportunity, when Smoking in the Boys Room came on the hi fi, to listen in as Brad and Vic reminisced about their misspent youth. Us younger folk are fortunate to have such fine role models.

Sadly, the secretary and his remarkable ability to record conversational minutiae were absent last night. There was no doubt much more that he would have been able to capture for the sake of bolstering the archive. But that's all I can remember from my end of the table.

Photographic evidence: